Tracy Corrigan

Tracy Corrigan is a columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph, who writes mainly on business and finance. She was previously with the Financial Times, most recently as head of the Lex Column.

The lifting of the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico follows a predictable pattern. Indeed, the chain of events following BP's disastrous oil leak is depressingly familiar: it's the financial crisis all over again.

Phase one: cutting edge technology. There is a new technology (deepwater drilling, securitisation) which some worry may be a bit risky, but it seems to be going OK so far.

And guess what: it's pretty profitable.

Phase two: excessive confidence. Bankers said: "Securitisation is perfectly safe because we have these great computer models which show that even if there are lots of defaults on individual mortgages, the structures will continue to function. We've been doing it for ages now. And don't worry about… Read More

The How fair is Britain? report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that full-time female workers still earn 16.4 per cent less than men and that after 30 years of narrowing, that gap appears to have stalled.

There is some additional detail on this gap:
The gender pay gap is lowest for the under 30s, rising more than five-fold by the time workers reach 40. It is influenced by a number of factors: lower pay in sectors where women are more likely to choose careers, the effect of career breaks and limited opportunities in part-time work. The level of earnings penalty is strongly mediated by levels of education but is not eliminated, even for the best-qualified women.
In other words, it could be that the remaining 16.4 per cent gap is not the result of discrimination but of the choices women make. Deciding… Read More

What's the most overused word or phrase in business discourse these days? There are some strong candidates – fit for purpose, value-added and client-focused are still right up there, but they have been around for a while. The one which has recently started to make me squirm every time I hear or see it – which is at least twice a day – is "demonise" and its ugly twin "demonisation".

We mustn't demonise bankers. Executive pay is being demonised. There must not be a demonisation of derivatives.

What the demonisation brigade really mean, in most cases, is: don't question our practices. If you do, we'll make ourselves out to be victims and you will be painted as our persecutors. I'm beginning to wonder if some PR executives are now routinely advising clients that if they are subjected to scrutiny, let alone criticism, all they have to is cry "demonisation" and all will be well.

How will David Cameron fill the gap in the economy left by cuts to the public sector? (Photo: Reuters)

David Cameron's speech to the Tory faithful reiterated the need for aggressive measures to reduce the deficit, taking credit, as George Osborne did on Monday, for restoring confidence in the economy. I think he has won that argument for now, partly because there is growing evidence from other countries that reducing spending will do more to help than to damage growth prospects.

But given the squeals of horror from the ranks when the axe started to fall – on child benefit for higher earners – it seems likely that Cameron isn't as confident as he… Read More

Has Jérôme Kerviel, the trader who nearly bust his bank, Société Générale, just received his just desserts? The star-turned-rogue trader has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay SocGen damages of nearly €5bn – roughly what it cost the bank to unwind the staggering €50bn of exposure Kerviel had accumulated – after he was found guilty of abuse of trust, forgery and computer abuse. (I presume computer abuse means more than just shouting when you lose a document, or we'd all be doing time).

This is what his lawyer had to say about the sentence.
He (Kerviel) is revolted that those that created him put all responsibility on him. Prison is unacceptable for a man who didn’t make a penny.
In France,… Read More

George Osborne opened his speech to the Tory party conference by saying that there is good news and bad news.

There certainly is. Scrapping child benefit for households in which at least one person earns £44,000 is painful for middle class families which are already being squeezed, particularly since it isn't very long since we were assured that child benefit would be preserved. This morning, I heard Iain Duncan Smith explain that "we are adjusting it", but that it is being preserved, but of course the fact that it is being preserved for other people isn't terribly comforting.

For some, the loss of child benefit is a price worth paying for the broader welfare reform package agreed with IDS which will… Read More

I know it's hard to keep track of the constant stream of regulatory shifts and re-thinks, but if I remember rightly, the reaction to the agreement on Basel III, the new framework for global capital requirements reached earlier this month, was broadly positive. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said it will require lenders to have common equity capital equal to at least 4.5 percent of assets and will introduce an additional 2.5 percent buffer.

But British and American banks are already well capitalised, on this basis. Others will be given years to phase in the new levels. Bank stocks rallied, as investors demonstrated their relief that the new capital requirements did not seem unduly onerous.

Indeed, some worried that the new rules are too kind to the banks. Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief investment officer of Pimco, for example, noted that:
The phasing-in period for the new capital requirements is surprisingly long,… Read More

When I visited my university’s career office, roughly 25 years ago, I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduating, and the careers adviser had only one suggestion to make: accountancy.

This prospect – and my own cluelessness about what other careers might be open to me and whether I’d be any good at them – depressed me so deeply that I resolved not to think about the scary business of getting a job until my finals were out of the way. I subsequently discovered that nearly all my fellow undergraduates were also advised to become accountants – largely because accounting jobs were fairly plentiful at the time, I suspect.

For some friends, it became a fall-back plan. But no one really embraced the… Read More

How would you rate HSBC's handling of the succession of Stephen Green, its departing executive chairman. Farcical? A fiasco?

Following internal ructions and selective leaking, it is now expected that Michael Geoghegan, HSBC's current chief executive, with not replace Green (Plan A) nor will he remain as chief executive while a senior board member, probably John Thornton, takes on the chairmanship (Plan B). Instead, he is expected to leave the bank and to be replaced by Stuart Gulliver, head of investment banking and Europe, while Doug Flint, the current finance director, takes over the executive chairmanship (Plan C).

Plan C has one big disadvantage: it was preceded by plans A and B. This makes the board look either flaky or fractured or both and exposes the internal politics of the bank to… Read More

What exactly is it that Vince Cable wants to change about the British capitalist system (which is, after all, rather different from, say, the French, American or Indian versions)?

He is exercised about a number of legitimite issues – short-termism, poor corporate governance, excessive remuneration. Yet parts of his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference sound instead like a broad and emotive assault on capitalism. This is a shame, because there are flaws in any system – sometimes as a result of perverse incentives created by regulations or through the tax system – and it is worth trying to fix them.

But Cable's speech neither clearly spells out problems, nor sets out workable solutions. Take banks, for example. He sums up the Coalition agenda in seven words: make them safe and make them lend. The trouble is that the two halves of this sentence are contradictory, or at least difficult to reconcile… Read More